August 31, 2010

Guardian Science Podcast

Check out recordings from our antics at the Secret Garden Party this July on the Guardian weekly science podcast, including the Synaesthesia Game, our sexy science pub quiz, and interviews with scientists Tom Wright and Petra Boynton – coverage begins about 14:25 in. Have a listen here.

July 29, 2010

SGP: Body Mapping with Petra

Sex psychologist Dr Petra Boynton joined science punk Frank Swain for a sexy science pub quiz. We learned more than we thought we could about chastity belts, medieval gynecological texts and studies into the walking patterns of women who experience vaginal orgasms. A lovely mail order bride and a constable from the fashion police stepped up to the front to demonstrate such a walk by competing for the most convincing vaginal orgasm strut.

Who won? The bride – with a fantastically normal gait.

By Zoe

July 23, 2010

The Guardian Science Blog

Guerilla scientists infiltrate Secret Garden Party

Synaesthesia, Petra Boynton’s intimate places, communicating with the comatose and Marcus du Sautoy all feature at this weekend’s Secret Garden Party, courtesy of Guerilla Science.

It may have been the burlesque freak show temptress who set fire to her skin, the empathic robotic bust of Elvis sitting in the eyeworks laboratory in Blade Runner, or the three metre long tube that reveals the shape of sound with dancing fire – but regardless of the victor, there are many contenders for the title of the quirkiest performers Guerilla Science has featured this year.

This weekend at The Secret Garden Party might find us a new claimant to the title – perhaps Sampa Von Cyborg, who will perform live hangings and hookings in the name of science. Or maybe the giant brain that sings when you show it colours.

Guerilla Science started four years ago, sedately enough, with eight lectures in a grassy field at the Cambridgeshire music festival The Secret Garden Party, with scientists talking about such everyday topics as “Is God a number?” and “Could we live forever?” This year we have found ourselves in the most strange and unlikely settings for science, far more bizarre than an English music festival.

Astrobiologist Lewis Dartnell, accompanied by Guerilla Scientist Louis Buckley clad in a silver spacesuit, took us on an audio tour of the stars at the Stoke Newington International Airport arts festival Distance, where he spoke alongside a performance artist offering free “spoonings”.

Then there was Secret Cinema’s grandiose homage to Blade Runner. To help the audience think about what makes us human, computer scientists Laurel Riek from Cambridge University and Peter McOwan from Queen Mary, University of London, brought robots and surreal visual tests. Seeing them chat about neural networks inside the smoky eyeworks laboratory, while above us strippers danced on platforms, and outside costumed midgets smashed vintage cars with baseball bats, was truly memorable.

At the Lovebox in east London last weekend, burlesque artist Vivid Angel performed live piercings and burnings while hooked up to live biomonitoring equipment while she discussed pain with clinical psychologist Matteo Cella. (Her favourite kind of pain? “A broken heart.”)

And the incredibly talented Vid Warren, who beatboxes while playing the flute, lent us his sonic skills as we amplified his sounds into our Reuben’s tube – a three-metre-long metal tube that reveals the shapes of sound waves with a string of dancing flames, a performance we call Sonic Fire. Our physics maestro Steve Mould (the science presenter on Blue Peter) was on hand to explain the properties of sound. As he said, “Things become more beautiful when you understand how they work.”

There are many groups doing fantastic science outreach events for the public around the world, but we’re pretty sure nobody does it quite like us. We’re especially passionate this year about creating interactive events, to break down the barrier between “expert” and “audience”. As our head of marketing Mia Kukathasan puts it, “The lab is everywhere.”

And so at the Secret Garden Party this weekend near Huntingdon in East Anglia, music psychologist Gianna Cassidy and singer songwriter Eoghan Colgan will discuss the science of musical expression, and festivalgoers will be able to help score a soundtrack for the festival using nifty interactive iPad technologies. Also on music, Cambridge neuroscientist Jessica Grahn will help us understand how babies are better at picking up rhythms than their parents and will lead the crowds with sonic social bonding routines.

Sex scientist Petra Boynton will discuss our intimate places with intimate questions and ask us where we like (and don’t like) to be touched. Boynton and other scientists and philosophers will host small intimate discussions in a boat on the lake.

Perhaps most spectacularly, agency of adventure and play Coney has teamed up with scientists who study synaesthesia to produce a game exploring this condition, in which the senses are blended. Some people “hear” colours and “smell” numbers, for example. A giant brain, created by model-maker Roseanne Wakely, will be “fed” visual stimuli and in turn will sing tunes and instructions, leading participants through an elaborate and undoubtedly original game, like “a giant visual Kaos pad” says Bowdler.

There will still be lectures. The current Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, mathematician Marcus du Sautoy will tell us about the beauty of prime numbers and why David Beckham wears the number 23 shirt.

And neuroscientist Dr Adrian Owen will explain how we can speak to people in comas. He made history recently when, after a decade of careful work, he used brain scans to prove that some people in comas are actually conscious and can communicate if asked the right questions in the right way.

We cannot imagine any reason why science would not belong at a music festival, alongside cabaret strippers and crystal healers. The theme this year is “fact or fiction”, and of course we fall into the former category. But we don’t consider this to be a handicap. As our tagline goes: truth is stranger than fiction. Reality provides the mind with incredible fodder for the imagination. Some people just aren’t willing – or lucky enough – to see it that way.

“Why does Guerilla Science exist? Simple: Science is part of our culture, yet often it’s left languishing in the lab or conveyed in dull or patronising ways,” says director Jenny Wong. “We are experimental people by nature, who like new trying new things. So ‘mixing science, art, music and play’ [our motto] reflects all of our interests. By bringing these together and collaborating with interesting people with new ideas, you can’t help but think we’ll produce something amazing. People who think in creative ways and succeed in capturing your imagination only make life more exciting.”

By helping people to experience “science” in new ways, in unexpected places and with the quirkiest of collaborators, we hope to inspire them to reflect on the complexity of their lives and how remarkable it is to exist at all.

Zoe Cormier is one of the directors of Guerilla Science

July 22, 2010

Secret Garden Party, Saturday July 24: Escape

See the electricity in your skull, shed all inhibitions, show us your secret places,learn to love pain, and set yourself free. 

11am Visualising the mind, Luciana Haill, The Institute For Unnecessary Research, with Magician Darius Ziatabari

See the brain brought to life with soundscapes and optical treats woven from the electricity inside your head with neurofeedback artist Luciana. Darius will add live hypnosis demonstrations to show what happens under mastery of the mind.

12pm The Synaesthesia game, Coney & Guerilla Science

The Professor needs your help! After making a musical brain that mixes the senses, he needs to feed it with visual stimuli hidden around the Secret Garden. Transform colour into sound and learn through play with Guerilla Science and agency of adventure Coney.

1pm Learn To Love Pain With Sampa von Cyborg

Explore how body artist Sampa von Cyborg transcends the pain threshold with a session of live piercing, cutting, hooking, dragging and burning while hooked up to biomonitoring equipment so you can see his heart race (as yours does too). Take a ride to the event in a car – dragged by Sampa himself. What a way to start the day.

2pm Body Mapping  and the Science of Sex, Petra Boynton, UCL

Show us where you like to be touched with sex educator Petra, who will explore your intimate places with intimate questions. Shed your inhibitions, open your mind and share your secrets. Then jump in our boat for an extra intimate chat on the way out to science island.

3pm Pink  My  Poop,  James King & Daisy Ginsberg

Give yourself a health check with The Scatalog. Speculative designers Daisy and James will show how synthetic biology could be used to help monitor disease with E. chromi, a yogurt drink designed by Cambridge biologists that turns your poop pink if something plagues you. Help us make magenta manure.

4pm Mastering Memory, Ed Cooke

Explore the nooks and crannies of your mind and improve your powers of recall at the same time with memory maestro and Times columnist Ed. Learn to keep the unforgettable unforgotten.

5pm Science Pub Quiz, Frank Swain, Science Punk

Bring your grey matter for a workout in this pub quiz with a twist. Our quizmaster is back with the fan favourite: tricky trivia, boistrous heckles and witty drunkards await. Learning is fun, especially with beer.

And out and about…

10am The  Miniature  Zoo,  Tim  Maynard of the Living Classroom

Snakes. Tarantulas. Chameleons. Scorpions. Stick insects. Oh yes.

11am Kitchen Science, Nikolai & Pete

Discover the extraordinary in the ordinary.

1:30pm Flavour feast, Rachel Edwards-Stuart & Becki Clarke

Celebrate the manifold facets of flavour with a sensory smorgasboard.

1pm Photography in Five Dimensions, Anab Jain & Jon Ardern of Superflux

If parallel universes exist, what would they look like?

3pm Rosie The Organ Grinder With Physics Maestro Steve Mould

Discover the secrets of sound with a hand-made street organ.

Dusk-2am The Traveling Observatory, Elisa Kraus

Explore the night sky with top-notch telescopes.